


Everything that Used to Matter doesn’t Matter Anymore

by AnnCherie



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Beast Quentin, F/M, PWP, Shadeless Julia Wicker, friends to lovers except in a dark way, shameless use of the chatwins
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-21
Updated: 2019-04-21
Packaged: 2020-01-23 11:29:03
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,657
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18548860
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnnCherie/pseuds/AnnCherie
Summary: No one means to take a Shadeless Julia into another timeline. No one in their right minds would.





	Everything that Used to Matter doesn’t Matter Anymore

**Author's Note:**

> unedited, might go back later but i'm too tempted to make it a multi-chapter to do so right now...

No one means to take a Shadeless Julia into another timeline. No one in their right minds would. Sure, she had been helpful in killing the Gods Ember and Umber after her experience killing Reynard in revenge, but she was much less useful now that she acted even emptier than before. Still, in the narrow minute that the clock opens for Josh and Kady at the key, Julia grabs forcefully onto Kady's jacket and is thrust into what appears to be Timeline 23.

 

Julia doesn't have any magic like the rest of them but it turns out that's what saves her when she's used as bait for a Quentin who is no longer Quentin. It's wrong the way he senses it, sniffing the lack of power off of her like the Beast he has become. With a quirk of his lips and a dark gleam in his eyes, he then laughs in the form of twisted joy.

 

“You?” he drawls, flashing neon blue eyes. They're disturbing, but she stares into them anyway. “Julia Wicker left as nothing but human and even then barely that? I have to admit I love the irony.”

 

“Like you love anything,” Josh23 snaps, but then he's dead with the flick of Quentin's wrist. 

 

Julia sighs at his flair for the dramatic that he he had always pretended didn't exist. Quentin tilts his head at her lackluster response, ignoring Kady's charge for him that Marina holds back. There's a flash of light, and then Julia is now with him in the Fillorian castle that's somehow been turned into a history museum. 

 

Looking around, she's not surprised when Quentin impatiently asks, “Don't you like it? I thought you of all people would appreciate it.”

 

So he still felt ego and pride, she notates, just as she still felt thrill and selfish vindication. Now she laughs, walking down the corridor and out of the throne room to peruse the objects she had imagined as a child. Some she had pictured more correctly than others, but none had been described by Plover in the accurate detail she saw before her. “Haven't you heard I disappoint everyone now?”

 

“I didn't keep you alive to hear self pity,” he scoffed. 

 

“No,” she easily agreed with a nod. “You kept me alive because now you have someone to call Jane who can't overthrow you. I'm the stand in last artifact to fill in the Fillory of the books.”

 

Quentin shrugged his hand in her direction. “See, you do appreciate it. No one else understood.”

 

“And I'm sure you killed everyone who argued.” A thought struck her and she giggled. “Did it ever feel odd? Pretending to be Jane and Martin, siblings, when you wanted to fuck me?”

 

Maybe she shouldn’t have asked, she only considers for survival, when he gives her a bored glance before turning around to walk back to the throne room. “Do you ever get tired of turning things around to be about you?”

 

“Come on, Q,” she baits as she follows, having found amusement in the danger when he didn’t kill her on spot at the challenge. While she isn’t stupid, he most likely would at some point, why not have fun in the meantime. “You got into these books for me in the first place.”

 

He whips around then and she stops and faces him with a smirk. There’s a thrill in pushing him that she had only once given into when she had felt emotions. Back when he was at Brakebills and he had thrown her to the trash and judged her for it, she had pushed back by trapping him in his own mind. What would he do to her in return without his essential goodness?

 

“How pathetic of you to believe you ever meant more to me than this place.”

 

Raising an eyebrow, she moved forward to the place he had paused, coming with inches of him. All that happened was he mirrored her expression, although she was sure hers might have been more arrogant while his was more cold. “Oh believe me, in my timeline you prove that. None of that matters anyway, does it? We both know that you’ll kill me the second you want to without a care in the world.”

 

“Is that supposed to be you stroking my ego?” he sneered. “Or do you just want to feel smart?”

 

“Neither,” she replied, stepping even closer. There weren’t moths now, just a ghost of Quentin. Long floppy hair that needed to be cut was the only similarity, the rest was soft brown eyes turned narrow and the old cologne long gone. “I don’t have my shade as well, remember?”

 

“What are you doing then?”

 

“Satisfying curiosity,” she said, moving forward to see if he would let her lips kiss his without pulling back or slashing her stomach. When he lets her, she’s surprised, but she still gives in despite the metallic taste on his lips because when her hands reach his neck and her eyes are closed he still feels like Quentin. 

 

Indulging in the slightest whim or desire is easy now without a shade, despite how her past self would hate her for doing this. Previously she had always been too scared of losing him to a teenage romance when he had been the one constant in her. What if he ended up leaving, what if she pushed him away, what if she hurt him, what if that hurt broke him like life had almost done several times? But now? Well this Quentin wasn’t vulnerable. This Quentin didn’t care about her or anything else and everything could be physical like it hadn’t truly been before.

 

Julia pushes him forward with momentum, hoping to reach a display table for leverage, but he turns her around and she’s sitting on it instead. Her jacket is off within seconds and she isn’t even sure who took it off, but she doesn’t mind. It’s his coat as well, then her shirt, than his, and then his magic is used to disappear the rest and avoid the fumbling of pants. Even without the same feelings that she once had it confuses her how turned on she is the second they are naked together. They had been best friends since kindergarten and yet now without encumberments they were easily moving against each other as though they had been glass candles broken into open flames.

 

Unable to conceal surprise that he gives way to an unselfish start, she shivers when he takes time to move his tongue along her breastbone and up her neck. In response she weaves her fingers through his hair and pulls, but his hands then shift from her hips up to the bottom of her breasts, pushing them upward before twisting her hard nipples with the same pressure she had caused. Exploration became a priority in a way she hadn't expected, not when she thought it would be a classless romp that she could use against him or Quentin40 later. Wiry structure of his arms and legs and chest felt rough and pleasing under her hands. Julia had never intimately felt how his spine met his ass, or the fact that he didn't have the small dick high school bullies had imagined. The length of it she couldn't help but appreciate given the moan it gave her when he easily slid inside of her. What had always felt like a forbidden fantasy coming to fruition had her more than enough wet. Embarrassment would be left for a future Julia.

 

With him slowly thrusting inside of her, controlling the weight of her so the table didn’t topple, she lost her emptiness to lust for the first time in months. Even though this Quentin was akin to a God with his power, he was no trickster. Skin to skin with her mouth on his neck as if they were embracing felt both familiar and new at once. As the tempo increased so did her necessary hold of his hair and he roughly bit her neck enough to make a bruise and still make her hum. Moving her tongue to his ear she’s happy to hear him exhale in enjoyment. When their eyes finally met, the greedy and fulfilled way that Quentin looked at her struck something inside of her. She has to tighten her muscles to stop him from an early release.

 

Heart beating so fast that she almost feels like she had performed a powerful hedgewitch spell, she kisses him deeply. Adrenaline is to blame, she thinks, and the simple high of release that came with succumbing to desire. Nothing else, she determines, even when she wants to please him in a way she had never thought of before. Always having written off the smallest feelings of attraction to him as puberty-- or as an adult the mystery that came with cuddling any guy in bed-- the acknowledgment that he was good at sex was rewarding. Rocking with him at the perfect angle to rub her clit, she begins to climax, and they both reach the same conclusion all at once while looking in each other’s eyes. Sweat is one of the things they both share at the moment, that and a sense of wonder.

 

“That wasn't so hard, was it?” Quentin bitterly asks her, changing the mood as though it was crucial to his state. “Over twenty years and the loss of your shade to deign to fuck me?”

 

“Nice, Q,” she replies, rolling her eyes. Anger doesn’t reach her as it should have but neither does her previous easy amusement. They still haven’t pulled away from each other, with him still inside her, and that feels like it must mean something if not that they were going to have another round. 

 

“I’m not your ‘Q’,” he jeers. 

 

She shrugs. “And I’m not your Julia.” After a moment, she adds, “But I suppose for now I can be your Jane.”

  
  



End file.
